I finished off the Summer and Winter samples on 8 shafts last night and was left with 2 metres of warp! Being lazy, I went off to find/create a draft which would work on the same threading and this is what I came up with.
It has been woven in blue and red, not blue and white and I have managed two repeats so far.
Each repeat is about four inches square. I will do a length of this and then find another draft. It is nice to find that I can create a draft that works and even edit it correctly
The other thing I have done today is to file things away. Piles of postcards, print-outs of photos, Mostly gone. But I have a problem with records. When I worked, I kept each job separate and now my mind wants to do the same with textiles. But that means far too much filing. At work, we had ISO9001 which automatically means too much filing. The result for my textiles is a real mishmash. I have a large spiral bound A3 book for Creative Textiles, I have a smaller than A5 book to write what I have done in bookbinding. This is a mistake because it is not big enough to paste in pictures. And I have an A5 day book where I paste in postcards, do drawings etc. This is within two pages of the end. All this came to a head today when I realised that I wanted to file away a batch of fabric samples which had to do with book covers. You've guessed it!! I started another book. This one is something from the back of the cupboard and is A2!! which means I can get three fabric samples on one page.
The fabric samples have all been screen-printed with the title and author for A Christmas Carol and are interesting.
- I will have to get anothe Thermofax screen made. The title in mock Mediaeval script is useless.
- I used the existing Thermofax screen to print on to various scraps of handwoven material. A piece of silk at 60epi, a piece of Tencel at 30 epi and a piece of cottolin at 20epi. The cottolin was not acceptable but the other two were fine. This is for a book I intend to weave. (Well why not?)
I am in the market for a loom with more shafts (currently weave on an 8-shaft Baby Wolf). I am exploring options and would like opinions and advice.
ReplyDeleteI see that you work on a Megado. Why did you choose that loom and would you make the same choice again?
My Megado is 32 shafts and computer controlled. It also has a second warp beam which is plain while the first warp beam is a sectional beam. I used to have a Varpappu 8 shaft monster which was great but, as I got older, I found tying up the treadles more of a pain (literally). I wanted more shafts and computer control. At that time about all there was available was the Megado and AVLs. I have used a computer controlled AVL with 24 shafts at Stacey Harvey-Brown's The Loom Room and thought it was great. The warp beam is more conveniently placed than on the Megado, But otherwise the Megado is very good.
ReplyDeleteThe final decision was made on the basis that the AVL UK agent was not helpful whereas the Louet UK agent (Don Porritt) was extremely helpful.
However I did eventually buy an AVL warping wheel for doing the sectional warps and that is great. I had to buy the WW directly from the States as the UK agent would not supply it.
I believe that Toika now do a similar computer controlled loom but have never seen one in action. You would do well to try to visit people who have examples of these looms working.
I am pleased with the Megado. The tension is particularly good with their scheme of automatically lifting the warp beam. Hope this helps